tech

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With frequent travels to many different types of organizations, there’s one thing I notice first when walking the hallways, presenting at meetings, or being greeted by the receptionist. That’s the level of employee happiness and general satisfaction. I refer to this internal corporate barometer as an organization’s “Happiness Index.”

The Happiness Index is directly linked to employee engagement, which sits center stage in the world of work right now—and for good reason. Research has repeatedly shown that engaged employees are not only better producers, but they’re also more committed to the organization, achieve better business outcomes, and deliver superior levels of customer satisfaction. Since the top reason that people join or leave an organization is the relationship they have with their direct manager, leadership has a significant opportunity to impact not only employee engagement and satisfaction, but also the company’s bottom-line performance. That’s why I consider the Happiness Index to be an indirect path to an organization’s profitability, reputation, and long-term success.

As I heard the news about Dave Goldberg’s death last weekend, I joined many in feeling the sadness of this loss—to his wife Sheryl Sandberg, his family and friends, his colleagues at the company he headed as CEO (SurveyMonkey), and to the technology industry, where Goldberg inspired many.

The loss also extends to women in the industry, and to anyone who cares about women’s leadership development, because of the important role that Goldberg played in prioritizing women’s advancement over the decades of his career—long before it became fashionable to do so.

As we’ve seen from a flurry of media reports over the past few months, tech companies are beginning to “out” themselves for lack of diversity. Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and LinkedIn are among a growing number of tech firms whose voluntary disclosures on demographic data reveal industry trends of a workforce that’s still primarily male and white—especially at the executive levels and in actual technology jobs. (See “The Genie Is Out of the Bottle for Silicon Valley: Lack of Diversity.”)

Based on SHAMBAUGH Leadership’s research, which includes working with a number of tech organizations as well as other industries, a number of identifiable factors lie behind these concerning trends. Outdated and non-inclusive cultures, poor relationships with managers, and a lack of mentors and sponsors have all contributed to the industry’s apparent failure to appropriately recruit, advance, and retain women and minorities.

As the U.S. technology sector has boomed, women and minorities have largely been left behind. This is what’s clear in the wake of recent disclosures on workforce demographics from a handful of tech companies.

On June 25, Facebook became the latest tech giant to publicly release its demographic data, which indicated that men represent nearly 70% of all global employees. Worse yet, of the 31% of women in the company, a mere 15% work in jobs that are actually technical. (Women hold 47% of non-technical jobs.) When it comes to the top of the pyramid, although Facebook boasts COO Sheryl Sandberg, more than three-quarters of senior-level jobs (77%) globally are held by men. Among these senior-level executives in the U.S., nearly three-quarters (74%) are white, leaving just a quarter of the pie for everyone else (19% are Asian, 4% Hispanic, 2% black, and 1% two or more races).